Given the type of cycling we ended up doing today it was good thing we took the rest half day yesterday. We left the hotel around ten, escort in tow as always and began our cycle up the Indus Valley. For most of the day we followed the road the pretty much blasted into the steep rock face which rose and fall as it navigated each spur.  

 
  
In summer this section can reach sweltering heat as the narrow valley and exposed rock act as big radiators, but today it was overcast threatening rain and the conditions were cool, if not perfect. The road would rise and fall in soon predictable rhythm that made the cycling very relaxing, despite the precariousness of the road. 

 

  
 Nothing lined the roads here, just the bare rock on one side and a drop down to the Indus on the other. Every now and then the route would sweep way out to the left and down, sometimes for kilometres, as it navigated a gorge cut by a tributary.
One flat tyre change and a noodle break later it was lunchtime. We pulled into a small shack tucked into a bend in the road as the rain started to fall. Our escort changed and was replaced by a rather impatient one who wasn’t much pleased when we ordered more food or when we stopped outside to talk to some cyclists from Islamabad driving up to Gilgit.

   

 The rain continued after lunch but it added to the scenery in a way, making the rock face slick and shiny and the Indus an uncertain haze below. It kept us nice and cool on the climbs refreshed on the descents. So we continued on much the same as after lunch, stopping once to buy some biscuits for after the cycle (accompanied by an impatient ‘go, go!’ from the escort who fortunately changed after that town). As darkness started to creep in we decided to stop to camp, we passed by a police checkpoint with a nice big garden.

 

  
  To camp here was an impossible request however, no matter how much we tried to explain that it would be dark before we reached town and riding in the rain on these roads was more dangerous than letting us camp here. The police were determined to get us to the next town and said it was only 10 km away. This was not true. 

 

 
It was dark and the rain continued to pour down as we entered Dassu nearly an hour later. No streetlights meant navigating the potholed, busy, rain slick road through town was quite difficult. As our requests to camp before town had been denied we left it to the police to find somewhere to stay (the police station in Dassu also being out of the question). This was harder than we thought it would be as the rain was predicted to last five days and many people had come into Dassu town from higher up in the mountain to wait it out an hopefully avoid any landslides or worse.
Eventually we found somewhere with a basic room for four people and after a bit of haggling got what we felt was a decent price. In the end we were happy to be inside as the rain continued and the last push to Dassu kept us on schedule. We drifted off warmed by the thick blankets as the rain pattered on the tin roof.

We had hoped that losing our escort yesterday would mean there wouldn’t be one onus today, and it was true for the morning as we road the busy, hilly road between Abottabad and Mansehra. Once we got to the police checkpoint before Mansehra though we were made to stop and wait for a truck follow us.
At this stage we were happy enough to take the escort as we thought we wouldn’t get to ride this section of the KKH at all. The last tourists of last season that had gone up in November had been made to ride a bus all the way through the KPK province, from Abottabad to Chilas. It having to put up with a sometimes actively annoying escort allowed us to cycle then so be it.
Mansehra sat at the bottom of a wide valley with green fields either side. The town was busy as always. The road on the other side of town followed a river as trees dappled shade and the ride after Manshera was surprisingly serene. We stopped for lunch at a small fish shack beside the river. Our escort made us move on and eat at the’VIP’ restaurant down the road that didn’t serve any fish.

 

 
  
The landscape became even more picturesque. As the foothills of the Karakorum moved in over the flat land more and more terraced farms appeared on the sides of the hills growing rice and tea. This progressed gradually until the hills were all steep and covered with terraces or left with trees where to steep to cultivate. The road into the hills was lush and green with streams running along side it. It felt almost Alpine.

  

 
 The ride continued much like this for the rest of the day. We would pass through the occasional village but for the most part settlements were dispersed farm houses scattered over the terraced hills. We filled up our water at a pump and then went to find somewhere to camp.

 

 
We found a perfect spot out of view of the road amongst a small clearing of trees on small flat top of a hill. We pulled over to set up and of course the escort didn’t want this. We weren’t trying to be difficult or to make their work hard, but we didn’t want to go pay for a hotel when this perfect spot was available. They didn’t have a good reason either, just the old ‘security issues’ and this time they claimed ‘wild dogs would come’. Thus we felt in the right to set up our camp. 
Since we were at an impasse the situation was escalated up the chain of command until a station officer arrived and told us to get going by spinning a yarn about local families not liking the police. We managed to negotiate out of staying in a hotel (expensive) to camping in the yard at the next police checkpoint over. A police checkpoint they claimed was only 10 minutes of cycling away, but with it getting dark we got them to carry us and the bikes in the van. We had learnt by now that any claims the police make to get you moving aren’t entirely true and a good thing too as the checkpoint that was a ’10 minute cycle’ away turned out to be a thirty minute drive over two steep hills.
Finally we were set up in the yard of the police checkpoint. You would think this would keep them happy but in the middle of the night another policeman came by and tried to get us to move to the hotel. At this point we were behind sandbags and razor wire next to a police checkpoint at the top of a pass so we were pretty sure he was full of it and went back to sleep.

We woke up safe and sound the next morning, wolf attack free. We packed up and set off to climb to the top of the mountain, turning the first corner we saw we were back in snow again as banks left over from the winter lined the side of the road. 30 minutes later the road came out of the pine trees and into the town of Changla Gali, the top of the mountain at 2500 meters. Here we ran into the policeman from last night who was all smiles and didn’t seem in the least worried or concerned.  

  
 We took photos and then started the descent down the other side. Immediately we came across a viewpoint and took more photos, and then had photos taken with us as all the Pakistanis there wanted a shot with us.
The road wasn’t a descent the whole time, as it followed the side of the valley to road would descend down to a small stream or tributary and then climb back up the other side. The scenery was beautiful, and vestiges of the tourist industry the flourished here before 2001 were still evident as we passed through villages filled with hotels and guesthouse, most of them closed. 

 

  
    
 After lunchtime the proper descent started out of the mountains and back down to Abottabad which sits at lowly 1200 meters. Riding downhill and taking the whole view in is hard to describe, you could see the road snaking away kilometres ahead and hundreds of meters below as the river wound below us further still and the peaks closed in as we got deeper into the valley. An exhilarating reward for all the climbing Hard to describe, here are some photos:

 

  
    
 A police van had started following us as we started the to descend. Back on the flat land around Abottabad though the serenity of the mountains disappeared replaced by the usual chaotic melee of Pakistan. We managed to shake the escort in. The bumper to bumper traffic of Abottabad. Out the other side we stopped for supplies and as always in Pakistan got talking to someone, a teacher of geography in the local university. Turned out he had a brother in Dublin, though I didn’t catch his name.
As the sun set we looked for somewhere to camp. The land around was a sort of sandy soil that had turned to steep, rocky hills or flat land that was always taken up by farming. We found a small strip of land hidden from the road and flat enough to camp on. The ride from Islamabad to Abottoabd via Muree has apparently some of the steeper roads of the KKH so having that behind us gave us great cause to relax as the sun went down of the foothills of the Karakorum.

   
 

If we thought yesterday’s climbs were steep today would blow that out of the water. In the morning clouds stared to close in as we were breaking camp. A light drizzle accompanied the first hour and a half as we negotiated switchback after switchback. Below us patchwork farms lined the valley floor and a few terraces clung to the sides of the valley, but for the most part trees took up the mountain faces.   
The road was very frequently lined with small shops and stalls and houses and passing through them you would always get a friendly ‘Salam Alaikum’. The rain gradually got heavier throughout the morning until we decided to take shelter under the roof of a petrol station and wait for the rain to pass. We stood there for almost an hour as the rain became a deluge and then moved on as it eased off.

  
We were still climbing, after lunch we arrived at the town of Murree, the first biggest town since Islambad and the end of the first part of the climb. Murree is at 2170m. 1500m higher than Islamabad and only 50km away, so the change in environment was drastic. After Murree we thought that the rest of the cycle would be downhill but only a brief decline before the climbing began again, steeper than before.

  
  
The rain came back, only drizzling now which kept us nice and cool on some of the steeper climbs. By evening we passed into a new district of Pakistan, the KPK. This area used to be known as the Northwest Frontier and can be difficult for foreigners to travel through with police sometimes forcing them to get busses. As we passed through the first checkpoint the guard, with a completely unconvincing grin on his face, old us we needed to pay 100 rupees to enter the KPK. What with his grin and his friend snickering behind him it was clear this was blatantly untrue and we moved in after putting up a token fight.
Right after this checkpoint was a series of steep switchbacks and at the end of the day these took the last of our energy. Looking around for somewhere to camp we saw how little flat ground thee was. We had to cycle along a little bit further until we got to a small shack that served food with a flat area beside it for cars and seating. We asked the owner to camp and he said ok.

  
A nice white car pulled up and the occupants started talking to us. In fact the first thing they did was hand over a wallet with an ID card in it. This was to prove that one of them was indeed who he claimed to be – the mayor of Mansehra, the next town north of Abottabad. He talked with us for a while and then presented us with his card, and invitation to lunch and half a bottle of whiskey before speeding off.
We had camp set up and darkness had fallen when a truck pulled up into the campsite, blasting us with its high beams. A policeman got out and came over to talk. He wanted us to move to a hotel for no particular reason. As usual he pulled out the ‘security issues’ line, a phrase they use pretty much everywhere here to scare you into doing what they want without having to come up with any concrete reason. This time when we pressed him for why we had to abandon our camp in the night he said something about wolves which confirmed there was nor real reason and all he wanted was for us to stay in a hotel, as most police desire.

 

 
A bit of a stand off occurred, we weren’t going to leave our camp or take it down in the dark so in the end we wrote out a little contract taking responsibility for our safety and relieving it from him, which seemed to do the trick. He left and we settled down to our omelet dinner and contraband whiskey under the a starry mountain sky.

 

  
 

We left Franks early, at least early for us when trying to leave a city. We were all very eager to start cycling again after the long downtime. On the way out of the city we pulled into the big mall to indulge one last time in some western comfort food before riding out to the remote KPK and Gilgit-Balitistan regions of Pakistan and the Taklamakan desert of Western China thereafter.
For riders if the Karakorum Highwaym, the road we were starting out on now, there are two routes out of Islamabad that both meet in the next big town of Abottabad. A flat route and a decidedly more hilly route. We figured the practice would do us good and so set off along the hilly route.
The Karakorum Highway used to be one of the biggest magnet for cycle tourists in the world. Nowadays, given how difficult it can be to get a Pakistan visa and to travel within the country itself many cyclist crossing Asia into China instead opt for the Pamir highway. Not for us though, the second option, the also-ran. We knew before leaving Dublin that riding the Karakorum was going to be one of the high points of the trip and seven months later we were here.
Out of Islamabad the road climbed gently, easing us back into the ride. Only thirty minutes of riding took us away from Islamabad and back to real Pakistan, where the roads were pitted, the traffic was twisted and the people and buildings spilled out onto the streets, it was great to be back.
We were climbing through thick deciduous forest with running streams that sandy cliff faces would jut out of frequently. Cars waved and people on motorcycles said hello as always. Before too long the gentle climb became steep and the rolling hills grew higher and higher. We were winding our way up a river valley now, the road following one side of it as we pulled away from the valley floor. This was just the beginning of the climbing we would get to do, but after so much flat cycling through Iran and Punjab it was a joy, a breath of fresh air to look back and have a view, a reward for lugging these piles of steel halfway around the world.

 

   We got higher and higher as the evening drew in. The landscape was very steep, finding somewhere with flat ground to camp would be hard so we stopped a big earlier than usual to find a spot. We eventually settled on a small patch of flat ground under some low hanging trees on a small hummock next to the the road.

   
 

   
 

The last day to Islamabad hopefully, we were about 100km away from they city. We left our campsite and unluckily André had received a flat tyre for some of the big thorns. At these stage we’re all pretty effective at repairing flats so it wasn’t long before we were going again.

For me this day was by far the hardest. Not kept any solid food down for the last three days was really catching up. Knowing that we could make it to Islamabad to day helped me along though and I didn’t want to have to cycle again tomorrow.
It was too bad then that the hills had gotten steeper and longer and the wind was blowing fiercely in our faces. There was a really great view from the ride, out over the rolling hills and valleys and gorges carved into the soft soil but with almost no energy each climb was a challenge.
It was like yesterday, riding for a while and then pulling over to the side of the road for a break or to get sugary drink. Tried to eat something at the start of the day but it came right back up after a big climb.
We might have been able to make it all the way had the sun not come out, but it did and it was hot. The hills, wind and heat was too much and at the bottom of another climb I had pull over and lay down.
A guy on a motorcycle came over to see if I was ok. He had perfect English, lived there in fact and was back on holiday. He said we were only five minutes from the next town and could get a ride on a bus there to Islamabad. He then pulled me to the top of the hill with his motorcycle and was off into.
He was right, we were able to get a bus these last 50km to Islamabad from this town. I don’t know if we would have been able to had we not press-ganged two students who came up to say hello into helping us find the bus station and then catch the bus. They were able to find out which bus we should take and then explain to the driver we wanted to put our bikes on, made our day a lot easier.

So we had to take a bus the last 50km to Islamabad but it was ok, we had made it most of the way there by bike and in my state I didn’t feel too bad about having to ride the bus.
We got into Islamabad nearly. The bus dropped us off between that city and Rawalpindi its sister city. We got in contact with Frank, our host here and then cycled the final 15km to meet him at last. Frank was a well travelled Dutch fellow now living and working in Islamabad, he was also hosting two German hitchhikers at the time also in the city to get visas, it was great to finally meet some other western travellers out here and compare experiences of Pakistan.

Getting to sleep in a bed indoors last night was beneficial no doubt, but I still felt pretty wretched. We had breakfast with Nadeem and went on our way.
Turns out I was worse that before. Constantly feeling like you’re about to thrown up while cycling isn’t all that pleasant. The terrain changed from the complete flat we had been riding through before to hilly riding as we slowly but surely progress northwards towards Karakorum and the Himalaya. It would have been a very nice ride that I would have really enjoyed if I felt a bit better than I did, but as it stood I had pull over every 30 minutes to rest.

  
We made really slow progress as a result, Andre was understanding of course. He had contracted a parasite in his gut at the start of his trip in Romania, so he knew what it was like. Still, having to stop every hour or half hour really limited how far we could cycle. 

  
We only made it 60km today, which isn’t a lot at all but we were ready to make it to Islamabad tomorrow. Riding in the hills had the benefit of campsites being easier to find. When we couldn’t go on any longer there was a nice spot right off the road in which to set up.